ADAMS' EARLY DAYS OF WIRELESS 1929 - 1939 (continued)
By Dr. Robert Adams, 2001

Speaking of public dissemination of information, I relate here to two persons in the names of both John Holden and Jimmy Mills, two of my mentors listed above. These two gentlemen were very wealthy and both owned powerful amateur wireless transmitters. They spent a good deal of their daily lives is their respective wireless shacks disseminating and exchanging latest wireless progress news. I heard Jimmy Mills discussing my "crystal amplifier" on air during some of his talk back sessions. Then there were, of course, the hundreds and maybe thousands of people around Hastings and beyond who would have been informed as, in those early days of wireless most people purchased all-wave receivers and many made a hobby of listening in on the amateur wireless bands transmissions, as I myself did with my own home-made all wave receivers. I did not, however, need to use my A. C. powered receiver for listening into local amateur wireless transmissions, as the two local ones mentioned were high powered and at close proximity to my home, hence their signal more than swamped my crystal-amplified crystal set, which frequently burst into action when my nearest amateur wireless station, only twelve houses away in the same street came on air.

It wasn't until the early fifties, when I was in my early thirties, that I first read about the claim by Bell Telephone Laboratories that they had invented the Transistor making a specific claim that they had invented the whole thing. I knew immediately that this claim was wholly inaccurate, but at that stage, what could I do about it and did I want to do anything about it. I was certainly in no state of preparation on any kind of scale to take a big outfit like Bell Laboratories on my shoulders. A young man in his thirties was not going to land himself into enormous debt let alone risk his career (which was well on the way) and future prospects. The cost alone to counter this announcement would have seen me out and there were important things ahead of me and projects to see through here in little remote New Zealand if I was to survive. Besides, who, in overseas circles, in their right mind, would believe such a monstrous counter claim from a thirty year old upstart in a land so far removed from the modern American model of superiority if the day in all things anyway. Tch! Tch! Well, that was then and, now things are different. Very different.

And so it well be nothing surprising for me to expect to hear, along with this revelation of mine, following Jack Shulman's exposure of the matter in Nexus Magazine of Australia (June/July 2000 issue) the basic questions as to why, after all this time, do I now go public on the matter. The basic answer to this is that following Shulman's article, incidentally titled "Reverse Engineering UFO Technology" wherein he purports to endeavour to sort out the question of 'who are/is the true inventor/s of this device - the transistor', I must enter the fray and I must do so NOW. Why? Because Shulman, in his attempt to get to the bottom of a genuine enigma, has along the way become enmeshed in nothing really more or less than speculation. Shulman may think he has researched his subject, but in truth, he has not. I forgive him entirely for not knowing of my involvement in the matter, for there was nothing in any mainstream academic of scientific references about my work as a lad or otherwise on this front. He could not possibly have known of me. Likewise he could not possibly have known the depth of contradiction in those mainstream references either because it would appear he has lacked the concentration required to conduct an intense universal study on the topic. Indeed he has only transposed his attention to the matter to a completely unrelated subject - alien technology, which is still, in it's entirety, in the realm of speculation and debate. And this is the pity of it all. In a way, I can understand Shulman's exasperation with the subject, given the contradictions surrounding the transistor's history, but to throw it over into the too hard basket is not the way out. Shulman, and anyone else, examining this matter, must be made to see that giving it over to Government cover-up or alien presuppositions lowers the significance of the matter to a degree whereby the topic cannot help but be relegated into the rubbish bin, or, at best, not to the 'topic of the month' bin. My views on this matter have already been expressed in this paper.

Having been involved as a lad both prior to and in my early teens with the captivating world of wireless and crystallography, and having the innocence of a young man in the 1930's who knew only things of technical importance and absolutely nothing of business, commerce, finance, marketing and the whole world around it, it should not be too difficult for readers to understand that for me, none of the latter mattered one whit in comparison to the import of gaining m ore and more knowledge of the path I had chosen. Besides, I was, from birth, not one of fortunes' favourites - had money meant much to me then, well, who knows what would have happened. But this is another story. Suffice to say, had I have been really interested in money to the degree that I would have risked all to claim the original inventorship of the transistor, then perhaps the acquisition of that money just may have been enough to dampen the spirit of adventure and perseverance of one so young. It has been known to happen. And so, as I bring this paper to a close, may I say that things are as they are supposed to be and, in hindsight, no amount of money could have provided me with the checkered and wonderful life I have had, and so much more, which has been very dear to me throughout this life to the present day. Had the advent of the transistor turned my life toward a different path, I feel almost certain that the inventions which followed on throughout the years of my life may never have been perceived, let alone culminated in the way they have to what they have. I am grateful for that.